Undercover Cook

“I’m eating just fine.”

“You’re downing too much salt and fat. She said your blood pressure has redlined a couple times. If you don’t start eating right, she’s going to sentence you to the cafeteria.”

“When did this happen?” Gabe asked, shaking his head before reaching into the bag and tossing a handful of seeds out into the grass.

“What?”

“When did I hit the point in my life when I have to be treated like a damned child?” He didn’t look at Nick, just threw more seeds, his movements jerky. Angry.

Nick didn’t have an answer for that. His grandfather was a seventy-five-year-old heart-attack survivor. After the heart attack it became apparent that living alone in his north Reno home was no longer a possibility, so Nick had helped him sell the house and move into the Candlewood Center, an assisted-living facility that would allow him the most personal freedom. It cost a bundle, but Gabe had made a huge profit on the house, which allowed him to pay the fees and still have money in the bank.

Not a bad outcome, except for the part where Gabe resented being told what to do.

He did okay with community living, and had made several friends. But while he happily played poker, took the weekly trip to the golf course, sat in front of the huge TV and ate low-sodium popcorn while watching sports with his friends, he steadfastly refused to partake in the meal plan offered by the facility.

After Gabe had balked, so had a couple of his new buddies. Their rebellion was driving the woman in charge of health care in Gabe’s block of apartments crazy as their blood pressures inched up. Fortunately, Lois was no pushover and had come up with this cooking-lesson angle as a way to get the guys to eat healthier meals.

And when she’d mentioned her plan to Nick—in hopes that he’d convince his grandfather, the ringleader, to cooperate—he’d had the happy suggestion that perhaps she’d like to contact Tremont Catering, which was less than a mile away, and see if they could rent their large kitchen for the lessons. It made more sense than trying to squeeze all the participants into the relatively tiny cafeteria kitchen at the facility.

The only downside was that instead of simply renting the kitchen, the Tremonts had insisted on being involved with the lessons. Nick would have preferred to have the place to himself, in order to snoop around while Lois did her thing, but this was definitely better than nothing.

“I’m not going to live forever,” Gabe said, pushing the door shut. Little quail heads appeared out of the juniper. “But while I am alive, I want to eat decent food.”

“That’s what the class is all about. Taking stuff you love and making it healthier.”

“Making it taste like cardboard, you mean. Your grandmother went on a health-food craze once. Let me tell you, that stuff she made with those healthy—” Gabe’s mouth twisted into a disdainful sneer “—recipes was awful. And you know your grandmother was a damned fine cook.”

Nick’s grandparents had divorced long before Nick had been born and Gabe rarely talked about the woman who’d left him. It was interesting that he appreciated what a fine cook she’d been. “Things have changed.” Nick assumed they’d changed, anyway.

He knew nothing about cooking, other than frying up the occasional steak. Everything he ate came from the freezer or a take-out bag.

“I was kind of hoping you’d take the lessons for my sake.”

“Your sake?” Gabe sounded surprised, then his expression shifted. “There’s no possibility that an attractive woman might be teaching these lessons, is there?”

Not that again.

Nick toyed with the idea of simply saying yes, but heaven only knew what his grandfather would do then. Nightmare scenarios shot through his head.

Nick’s wife, Miri, had died more than two years ago in a car accident and Gabe, who’d adored her, had grieved along with Nick. But after a year and a half had passed and Nick had remained buried in his work, with no social life and showing no sign of changing his ways, his grandfather had grown impatient. It was time for Nick to move on, “join the land of the living” as Gabe put it.

Nick was in the land of the living; he’d finally gotten over the raw pain of losing his wife, but he felt no desire whatsoever to try to fill the void she’d left in his life. Yes, the void was dark and unfulfilling, but it didn’t hurt. Why fill it with something that might cause him pain later?

“I want to learn some cooking techniques, Granddad,” he said in an exasperated voice. “Not flirt with the instructor.”

Gabe’s mouth twisted in annoyance. “Take your own damned lessons, then. Leave me out of it.”

“Darn it, Granddad. Stop being so effing stubborn.”

“Effing? In my day, we just came out and said—”

“I’m trying to be polite.”

“Why aren’t you at work?” Gabe suddenly asked.

Nick rolled his eyes. He wasn’t going to explain about his tool of a lieutenant or the reason he’d been suspended. For one thing, it was embarrassing. For another, Gabe would want every detail leading up to the suspension, and Nick wasn’t discussing the matter. Nick did not have a short fuse, but he’d been hot with the lieutenant. A little too hot. He honestly had a soft spot for the kid who’d been feeding them information and had then so abruptly disappeared. Wanted to look into the matter instead of having it shoved onto the back burner in favor of easier and more high-profile cases—such as busting drugs near the campus. Maybe they hadn’t made much headway in eight months, but in light of what had happened, pulling them entirely off the case made no sense, either.

“Different assignment, different hours,” he said dismissively. Gabe narrowed his eyes thoughtfully and Nick was suddenly reminded of all the times he’d unsuccessfully tried to pull a fast one on the old guy when he’d been a kid. “Come on, Granddad. Take the lessons. I want you to join, since I know jack about cooking, and I can’t if you don’t.”

“You want to take the lessons? You want to learn to make old-people food?”

“I want to learn to cook something healthy so I don’t end up having a heart attack.”

Gabe scowled at him, then shoved a hand through his thick white hair. “That’s dirty pool.”

“Only two of the guys have signed up, but more will if you do. And I honestly want to go.”

Gabe grunted, setting the birdseed bag down on the small table next to the window. “Sign me the hell up, then. You’re not going to rest until you do.”

“No. I’m not. It’s a win-win.”

Gabe then said the word that Nick had avoided in the name of politeness.

NICK WANTED TO take cooking lessons? Ha. Nick wanted to maneuver his grandfather into doing something he didn’t want to do and wasn’t above using emotional blackmail. Gabe still wasn’t quite sure why he’d let himself get wrangled into these lessons, except that it was obvious Nick had an ulterior motive and Gabe was curious as to what it was. Too bad it wasn’t the one he’d suggested—a cute teacher his grandson wanted to get to know.

Nick had changed since his wife had died. Drawn into himself, which was to be expected under the circumstances, and thrown himself into his work to deal with the grief. But after two years, he was still withdrawn, still totally focused on work and nothing but work, which worried Gabe.

He’d done the same back in his prime, after his wife had left him. And the result had not been good—in fact it had cost him dearly—and now here he was, alone, stuck in an old folks’ home. And he didn’t even have any decent memories to keep him company. The only thing that helped was that he was with some of his own kind. Lenny Hartman, the old son of a bitch, had been in law enforcement down in Vegas, and Paul Meyer had been a firefighter until he retired.

Both men had checked into Candlewood voluntarily, after their wives had passed away, something Gabe would never understand. He’d hung on to his independence until the last possible moment—where it was either Candlewood or Nick moving in with him after the heart attack. Nick had offered. Gabe had declined. His grandson needed to be in a position to get on with his life, and living with a cranky grandfather was not conducive to bringing home a hot woman.

Gabe walked over to his computer and brought up a screen, pleased that he was feeling a lot more comfortable using the contraption. For years he’d put off learning to use one, had allowed himself to be intimidated even though Nick had given him a laptop, until that damned Lois had forced him and the other guys into taking a basic class just a few months ago.

He couldn’t remember seeing a more intimidated group of men than he and his fellow inmates when they’d first settled in front of the computer screens at the community-college technology lab. Lenny’s first official act had been to pour coffee over his keyboard by “accident,” only to find that all the instructor had to do was unplug that keyboard, set it out to dry and plug in another.

After that they decided resistance was futile and discovered, grudgingly, that, yes, a computer could change a guy’s life. Open his world.

Make it seem less like he was in stir.

Gabe sat in his chair—an ergonomic model Nick had given him for Christmas instead of the recliner he really wanted, a blatant effort to get him to learn to use the laptop. He had to admit, though, that he liked the chair and because of it spent more hours on the computer than he had ever expected.

Which was how he knew that Nick didn’t even have a Facebook page. How in the hell was he going to socialize if he didn’t have the gumption to sign up for a social network?

Somehow Gabe had to come up with a way to kick his grandson in the ass and make him get on with his life—to not make the same damned mistakes Gabe had made in the name of professional achievement.

And fear.

CHAPTER TWO